Democratic Federal Communications Commissioner Michael Copps this week expressed concern about the pending AT&T-T-Mobile merger, calling it a "paradigm-altering transaction."
AT&T and T-Mobile have a "very steep climb" to convince Copps that the deal is worthwhile, he said during an interview on C-SPAN's "The Communicators."
"You will remember in the Comcast merger that I said at the outset that that would've been a very steep climb for me; I ended up voting against it," Copps said. "This is maybe even a steeper climb from a standpoint of a lot of power, a lot of influence given to one company in a world where two companies are going to control like 80 percent of the spectrum."
AT&T surprised the tech community recently when it announced plans to acquire T-Mobile for $39 billion. AT&T argued that the purchase will help stop the spectrum crunch and spur the companies's deployment of 4G service.
Copps, however, was concerned about what the deal will do to competition in the wireless space.
"I would hope that my colleagues ... will be asking themselves very serious questions about what residue of competition will be left if this merger is approved [and the impact] on American jobs," Copps said. "I'm trying to find that out. I haven't had a satisfactory answer on that yet, but there will be time to delve into that, and I hope and trust that we will."
There's also a lot of money on the table, some of which might end up bolstering the telecom market in Europe instead of the U.S., he said.
What concerns him most, however, "is this just sucks the oxygen out of the many issues that are pending before the FCC," he said, pointing to spectrum auctions and public safety networks.
Copps joked that "it seems sometimes that we're the Federal Merger Commission."
"At some point we have to decide if we're really serious about having competition or not and if you're going to have this constant trend toward monopoly or duopoly, then there has to be some rules of the road," Copps said. "There has to be some oversight there, there has to be some regulation there; I'm not hesitant to use that term."
Should the FCC approve the deal with conditions, Copps said he would - at minimum - need some market-by-market limits, divestitures, and open Internet/net neutrality requirements. But he stressed again that it would be a very steep climb before he'd even consider voting in favor of the merger.
The other three commissioners have not yet commented on the proposed deal, while Chairman Julius Genachowski declined to comment during a recent appearance at the CTIA Wireless trade show.
Earlier this week, Sprint formally objected to the merger and called on the government to reject the deal because it would harm competition in the wireless space.